1819—Victoria
is born.1826—First photograph
taken by Joseph Nicophore Niepce.
1829—Catholic Emancipation, ends most restrictions on Catholic
civil rights, property ownership, & public service.1832—Great Reform
Act.1834—Slavery banned in British colonies.
1837–67—Isambard Kingdom
Brunel builds London to Bristol railway for the Great Western
Railway.1837—Victoria
succeeds uncle, William IV, at age 18.
Dickens’s Pickwick
Papers and Oliver Twist. 1837–67—Construction of neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament. 1838—Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. 1840—Victoria marries first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,
will have nine children.
Penny postage insituted.
Dickens’s Old Curiosity
Shop. 1842—Founding of Mudie’s Library by Charles Mudie. 1843—Carlyle’s Past and Present.
Dickens's A Christmas
Carol.
First volume of Ruskin’s
Modern Painters.1844—Irish
potato famine begins.1845—Brunel
builds the S. S. Great Britain, the first propeller-driven steamship.1846—Repeal of Corn Laws, beginning era of free trade.
Dickens’s Dombey
& Son. 1847—Ten Hours Act restricts working hours of children in factories.
Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights.
Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre. 1848—Founding of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Marx and Engels,
Communist Manifesto. 1849—Dickens’s David Copperfield. 1850—First British Public Library Act, permitting the establishment
of public libraries.
Tennyson named Poet
Laureate.
Dickens’s Household
Words started. 1851—First telegraph cable laid across the English Channel.
Invention
of instantaneous photography by William Fox Talbot.
First cigarettes
sold in Britain.
Great Exhibition
at the Crystal Palace.
Half of population
of Great Britain lives in cities.
London
population grows from 1.1 million in 1801 to 2.7 million; reaches
6.6 million in 1901.
Dickens’s
Bleak House. 1852—Opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Last
duel fought in England at Priest Hill, Surrey (duels had been outlawed
in 1840s). 1853—Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls. 1853–56—Crimean War.
1854—Florence Nightingale goes to Crimea and organizes nursing
during the war.
Cigarettes introduced
into Britain.
Dickens’s Hard
Times . 1855—Balmoral Castle completed.
Newspaper
stamp tax abolished.
Dickens’s
Little Dorrit . 1856—Henry Bessemer invents blast furnace, permitting mass production
of steel. 1857—Founding of National Portrait Gallery.
First telegraph
cable laid across the Atlantic.
Matrimonial
Causes Act permits divorce for adultery (but women could not petition
until 1923).
Suppression
of Indian mutiny against British rule in India. 1858—Government of India transferred to the Crown.
Big Ben bell
cast (April 10).
John Speke
discovers Lake Victoria.
Launching
of Brunel ’
s Great Eastern, largest ship yet built. 1859—Big Ben enters service (May 31).
First women
admitted to Royal Academy schools.
Darwin’s
Origin of the Species.
Dickens’s Tale
of Two Cities. 1860—Introduction of trams into England (August 30).
Dickens’s Great
Expectations.
Nightingale publishes
first definitive textbooks on nursing.1861—Death of Prince Albert of typhoid fever at age 42.
Founding of Morris’s
design firm. 1862—Speke & Grant discover sources of the river Nile. 1863–65—Construction of St. Pancras train station. 1863–72—Construction of Albert Memorial. 1863—First underground railway, Metropolitan Railway in
London between Paddington & Farringdon St. (opens Jan. 10).
Marriage of
Prince of Wales (Bertie, later King Edward VII) and Alexandra (March
10).
Broadmoor
criminal lunatic asylum opened (May 27). 1864—Cafe Royal founded in London (bombed in 1940).
Dickens’s Our
Mutual Friend. 1865—Founding of Salvation Army by William Booth (July 2).
Joseph Bazalgette c
ompletes metropolitan drainage system in London (began 1855).
National
Association for Women’s Suffrage formed in Manchester; no voting rights
until 1918.
Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland. 1866—First Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid by the SS
Great Eastern (completed September 7).
Swinburne’s
Poems and Ballads. 1867–71—Construction of Royal Albert Hall. 1867—Second Reform Act, extending vote to
tax-paying
males of the urban working class. 1868—Disraeli becomes Prime Minister; defeated within several months
in election.
Last public execution
(May 26); public hangings stopped because caused crime among spectators.
Last shipment of convicts
from England to Australia.
Metropolitan
District Railway between Mansion House and South Kensington opens
in London
.1869—Ferdinand de Lesseps builds Suez Canal, dramatically cutting
journey to & from Australia & Far East. 1870—Education
Act, compulsory primary education until the age of 11.
A 1p
($1) fee per day for the schooling.
Married
Women’s Property Act gives women the right to earn and keep money for
their own use. 1871—Institution of practice of photographing prisoners (November
2).
Publication
completed of Encyclopedia Britannica (began 1768).
Opening of
Royal Albert Hall (March 29). 1872—Secret ballot made compulsory; G. Eliot’s Middlemarch
.
1874—Disraeli becomes Prime Minister for second time, governs
until 1880.
1875—First intelligible telephone communication made by Bell
(June 5).
Disraeli buys Britain controlling
interest in Suez Canal.1876—Victoria named Empress of India. 1877—Founding of Truth magazine.
Telephones, invented by Scottish
scientist Alexander Graham Bell, become available.
American Thomas Edison invents
the phonograph, recording "Mary had a little lamb."1878—First electric street lighting in London.
Whistler vs. Ruskin
Trial.1879—Edison invents the electric light bulb.
1880—St. James’s Gazette begins publication (absorbed
by the Evening Standard in 1905).
First telephone
directory issued in Britain (January 15). 1881—Founding of TitBits periodical by George Newnes.
Electric light
first used domestically.
First electric
power station in England opened at Goldalming. 1883—Expansion of Married Women’s Property Act.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island. 1884—Third Reform Act, extending voting rights to agricultural
workers.
Term
“Industrial Revolution,” for the period of 1760 to 1840, coined by
Arnold Toynbee.
Completion
of Revised Version of the Bible.
1885—Karl Benz invents the first automobile.
1885–89—Founding of the Men’s and Women’s Club 1886–89—Anatole Baju’s journal Le Décadent. 1887—Golden Jubilee, celebration of 50th anniversary of Victoria’s
reign.
Arthur Conan
Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story. 1888—Unsolved London murders of East End women by "Jack the Ripper."
County Councils
created in Britain.
Founding of
The Star (absorbed by The Evening News in 1960). 1889—Founding of Women’s Franchise League by Emmeline Pankhurst.
Arthur Symons’s
Days and Nights. 1890—Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
First
electric underground public railway line opens December 18: City &
South London Railway between King
William
St. & Stockwell).
First comic
book, Comic Cuts. 1891—Completion of New Scotland Yard by Norman Shaw.
Founding of
the Romanes Lectures at Oxford University by George Romanes.
Kelmscott
Press founded by William Morris.
Electrification
of trams in England began in Leeds.
Education
made free for every child.
Wilde’s
Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, “The Critic as Artist,”
and “Soul of Man Under Socialism.” 1892—Founding of The Westminster Gazette (absorbed by
The Daily News in 1928).
Wilde’s
Lady Windermere’s Fan.
Symons’s Silhouettes
. 1893—Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance.
George Egerton’s
Keynotes.
Arthur Wing
Pinero’s Second Mrs. Tanqueray, starring Mrs. Patrick
Campbell.
Aubrey Beardsley’s
Le Morte Darthur.
Wilde’s
Salome banned in London (staged in Paris in 1896).
New Zealand becomes first
country to give women the right to vote. 1894–97—The Yellow Book. 1894—Egerton’s Discords.
Publication
of Wilde’s Salome in English, with Beardsley’s illustrations. 1895—Founding of the London Promenade Concerts by Sir Henry Wood
(October 6).
Wireless telegraphy
brought about by Marconi.
Wilde’s
The Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest
.
The three
Wilde trials.
Symons’s
London Nights. 1896—Marconi patented wireless telegraphy (June 2).
Speed limit
for cars was increased from 4 to 20 mph.The Savoy
(
January–September). 1897—Official opening of the Tate Gallery, founded by Sir Henry
Tate (July 21).
Bram Stoker’s
Dracula. 1899—Symons’s Images of Good and Evil. 1901—Death of Queen Victoria at age 82 (January 22, 6:30 am).
Population
of London reaches 6.6 million.